Medals Prove Cuba Has Revolutionized Its Sports

It was a golden decade, the 1950s in Havana, as U.S. tourists played the casinos` roulette and blackjack and paid well to watch 12-bout fight cards.

For a $15 plane ticket, James Bussey flew to Havana every weekend to fight Cuban welterweight champion Kid Gavilan or other top Cubans.

``Before Castro, the athletes were allowed to take the money they made and hold onto it,`` said Bussey, a chef at the Coral Ridge Country Club.

Bussey, of Lauderhill, retired from boxing at 52-6-2.

``Back then, Cubans did it for the love of the sport,`` Bussey said. ``The place was always packed. The people loved us. The Cubans didn`t fight for their country, they did it because they were good. They loved to do it.``

Just after he came to power in 1959, Fidel Castro proclaimed, ``Sport is the right of the people.``

Two years later, the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) was formed, with Ready to Win as its motto. The credo adorns every facet of INDER operations, from the facade of its headquarters at Sports City in Havana, to the covers of the baseballs it manufactures.

Cuba has produced world-class athletes at a stunning pace since the revolution. It is a way to galvanize national pride, Castro says.

Bussey would still recognize his boxing haunts along Old Havana`s narrow streets. The Cuban sports system, he would not.

Since Castro, Cuban sport, particularly baseball and boxing, has grown stronger because no Cuban talent can leave. And because its athletes are nominally amateur, Cuba has performed extraordinarily well in the Pan American Games.

Its first victory was in 1963, and Cuba won every baseball game from 1967 to 1987, when it lost to the United States. Cuba overcame that defeat to win its sixth straight Pan Am gold medal.

Consider the statistics:

-- The Cubans, who had won just one Olympic medal from 1908 to 1960, were eighth in the gold count and 10th in overall medals at the 1976 Olympics, the last in which nearly all eligible nations participated. Only Bulgaria, ahead of them in medals, had a smaller population.

-- Cubans have been second only to Americans in the gold and total medal counts in the past five Pan American Games, and they are expected top do that again when they host the Pan Am Games Aug. 2-18 in Havana and Santiago.

-- Cuba has been the world amateur boxing leader for 18 years. Felix Savon, 22, is a three-time world champion.

-- Cuba has produced two of the most celebrated Olympic champions, runner Alberto Juantorena and heavyweight boxer Teofilo Stevenson. Juantorena is the only man to win the 400 and 800 meters in the same Olympics. Stevenson is the only boxer to win three gold medals in the same weight class. World record- holders Javier Sotomayor, a high jumper, and middle distance runner Ana Quirot are heirs apparent.

-- At the 1987 Pan Am Games in Indianapolis, the United States won a record 369 medals (168 gold, 118 silver, 83 bronze). Cuba won 175 (75 gold, 52 silver, 48 bronze).

In Cuba, sport is no longer a game for just the wealthy. A small budget has been replaced, despite increasing economic difficulty, by a $150 million yearly budget. Castro banned professional sports in 1959. International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch calls Cuba`s athletes ``state amateurs.``

Rafael Guerrero, owner of Gold Coast Gyms in North Lauderdale and Wilton Manors, was the head of the National Sports Institute of Cuba and national director of the Sports, Physical Education and Recreation Department. He played an integral role in developing Cuban weightlifting`s success, watching it grow from 88 to 1,500.

``Before Castro came to power, there was very little money dedicated to amateur sport,`` Guerrero said. ``Everytime the Olympics came around, 90 percent of the Cuban participants were the rich kids from the high-society clubs that could afford to train and travel.``

After the revolution, Guerrero said the sports system became more organized.

He fell out of favor after he was asked to doctor statistics that he read before the national assembly of sports officials. He was told to announce the number of weightlifters had increased 15,000 instead of 1,500.

``It was fraud; it was a big lie; I couldn`t live with myself, so I read my correct figures,`` Guerrero said. Soon after, he moved to Spain, where he was national weightlifting coach, then came to the United States in 1972.

As general secretary for the Pan American Weightlifting Confederation, he travels internationally, including to Cuba. He will be at the Pan Am Games in Santigao for weightlifting, a sport in which Cuba is favored to win every gold medal, 25 percent of its medal count.

``The fact is the revolution did a great job in sports,`` Guerrero said. ``Unlike before, they start with the small child and make physical education manadatory. Every coach is on the lookout for talent. They wait for the cream to rise to the top and take the best.``